Nick had thought of everything.
A horn beeped behind Jane. She startled at the noise. She’d stopped in the middle of the road. Jane looked in the rearview mirror. The man behind her was waving his fist. She waved back an apology, pressing the gas pedal.
The angry driver passed her for no reason other than to prove that he could. Jane drove another few yards, but then she slowed the van and followed a sign toward a long-term parking garage. The temperature inside the van cooled as she spiraled down the ramp. She located a spot between two sedans on the lowest basement level. She backed into the space. She checked to make sure she wasn’t being watched. No cameras on the walls. No two-way mirrors.
Nick’s precious metal box was on the floor between the seats. Jane tucked it under her arm just as her brother always had. She crouched as she made her way into the back of the van. The padlock hung from the box that was bolted to the floor.
6-12-32.
They all knew the combination.
The cash was still there. The Thermos. The cooler. The box of Slim Jims.
Jane added Nick’s box to the stash. She peeled off three hundred dollars, then closed the lid. She spun the lock. She got out of the van. She walked around to the back.
The steel bumper was hollow inside. Jane balanced the key on the rim. Then she walked back up the winding ramp. There was no after-hours parking attendant, just a stack of envelopes and a mail drop. Jane wrote down the space number for the van, then put the three hundred dollars in the envelope, enough for the van to park for one month.
Outside, she followed the cold breeze to Lake Michigan. Her thin blouse whipped in the wind. Jane could remember the first time she’d flown into Milwaukee to play at the Performing Arts Center. She had thought the plane had overshot its mark and ended up at the Atlantic because, even from twenty thousand feet, she could not see the edge of the massive lake. Pechenikov had told her that you could take the entire island of Great Britain and put it in the lake without the edges touching the sides.
Jane was shaken by a deep and unwelcome sadness. Part of her had thought—had hoped—that one day, she would be able to go back. To performing. To Pechenikov. Not anymore. Her touring days were over. She would probably never fly in an airplane again. She would never tour again. Perform again.
She laughed at a sudden revelation.
The last notes she had played on the piano were the jumpy, glib opening bars to A-ha’s “Take On Me.”
The hospital’s waiting room was packed. Jane became aware of how she must look. Her hair had not been washed in days. She had blood on her clothes. Her nose felt broken. Black bruises had come up around her neck. Probably the familiar pinprick dots of broken blood vessels riddled the whites of her eyes. She could see the questions in the nurses’ eyes.
Battered woman? Junkie? Call girl?
Sister was the only title left to her. She found Andrew behind a curtain in the back of the emergency room. They had finally intubated him. Jane was glad that he could breathe, but she understood that she would never, ever hear his voice again. He would never tease her or make a joke about her weight or meet the baby that was growing inside of her.
The only thing that Jane could do for her brother now was hold his hand and listen to the monitor announce the ever-slowing beats of his heart. She held onto him while they wheeled him to the elevator, when they took him to his room in the ICU. She refused to leave his side even after the nurses told her that visitors were not allowed to stay more than twenty minutes at a time.
There were no windows in Andrew’s room. The only glass was the window and sliding door that looked onto the nurses’ station. Jane had never had track of the time, so she didn’t know how long it took for someone—a doctor, an orderly, a nurse—to recognize their faces. The tone of their voices changed. Then a lone policeman appeared outside the closed glass door. He didn’t come inside. No one came into Andrew’s small room but the ICU nurse, whose previously chatty demeanor was gone. Jane waited for an hour, then another hour, then she lost count. There were no agents from the CIA, NSA, Secret Service, FBI, Interpol. There was no one to stop Jane when she put her head beside Andrew’s on the bed.
She put her lips to his ear. How many times had Nick done the same thing to her, put his mouth close, confided in Jane in such a way that made her believe they were the only two people who mattered in the world?
“I’m pregnant,” she told her brother, the first time she had said the words aloud to anyone. “And I’m happy. I’m so happy, Andy, that I’m going to have a baby.”
Andrew’s eyes moved beneath his eyelids, but the nurse had told Jane not to read too much into it. He was in a coma. He would not wake up again. There was no way for Jane to know whether or not her brother knew she was there. But Jane knew she was there, and that was all that mattered.
I will never let anyone hurt you ever again.
“Jinx?”
Her older brother was standing in the doorway. Jane should have guessed that Jasper would eventually find his way here. Her big brother always swooped in to save her. She wanted to stand up and hug him, but she didn’t have the strength to do more than slump into the chair. Jasper looked equally incapacitated as he closed the sliding glass door. The cop gave him a nod before walking across the hall to the nurses’ station. It was the Air Force uniform, wrinkled but still impressive. Jasper obviously hadn’t changed since she’d last seen him in the parlor of the Presidio Heights house.
He turned around, his mouth a clenched straight line. Jane felt sick with guilt. Jasper’s skin was ashen. His hair was cowlicked in the back. His tie was askew. He must have come straight from the airport after the four-hour flight from San Francisco.
Four hours in the air. Thirty hours in the van. Twelve hours to New York.
Nick had to be in Brooklyn by now.
Jasper asked, “Are you all right?”
Jane would have wept if she’d had any tears left. She held onto Andrew’s hand and reached out to Jasper with the other. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He held her fingers for a moment before letting them go. He walked back a few steps. He leaned against the wall. She expected him to ask about her part in Martin’s murder, but instead, he told Jane, “A bomb went off at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.”